Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
That distiction is probably a bit too subtle for Mr Cox.
But it’s not fucking subtle at all – if anyone wants to equate all Catholics of Irish descent with the IRA I’ll have some words to share. They’ll be short, sharp and not fit for company, but that’s really not my problem. :)
With the appointment of Don Brash yes-man Richard Long (the long-time Dom editor, not the newscaster) to the TVNZ board, it’s quite plausible Paul Henry will be returning to our screens.
I’m going to regret asking this, but would you care to show your working for that conclusion, Red? It's actually a non-trivial allegation you're making there, so at least make an argument instead of an assertion.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
The Econmist calculated that it would add $7 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, using the words “cloud cuckoo land” and “innumerate”, pointing out that the only serious defence of it was the belief that once elected, Romney wouldn’t really do what he said he was going to do.
Yup. And if you’re even half-way serious about being a fiscal conservative, David Stockman calling bullshit on Paul Ryan’s much-touted Budget plan should have raised more red flags than Mao’s birthday in Beijing. Anyone who thinks Stockman is now, or ever has been, some kind of born-again Keynesian ‘Communist’ is either a disingenuous GOP hack or functionally illiterate.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
The language they use: filth unfit to live, degenerates, dregs etc is very similar to what has been used in the lead-up to any number of bloody conflicts.
I don't know if it's particularly helpful to go there in this context, and there's a simpler (and sadder) explanation. Is this functionally any different from Romney's "47%" sneer when he thought nobody except big ticket one-percenter donors would hear? (And, frankly, some of the more turbo-charged rhetoric that gets thrown around NZ every election season? Or the numpties over at The Guardian who were having screaming shit fits at the very idea of a Conservaitve-lead government?)
There's a non-trivial number of people in this world who have politics confused with religion -- there are true believers, the righteous, and ANYONE who deviates from The Faith are either infidels or heretics. They're not just wrong, but they're either stupid or actively malignant. Always have been, and tragically always will be. Doesn't mean we should be stocking up the shelter with canned food and ammo. :)
At heart, folks like Trump are not only having a rhetorical dump all over tens of millions of their fellow citizens but saying elections only "count" when the outcome is to their liking. Sorry, folks, the world doesn't work like that. Free, fair and credible elections in a functional democracy certainly don't.
Am I disappointed the truly vile Michelle Bachmann wasn't given her marching orders by the electors of the Minnesota 6th? Yes, but unless credible evidence of significant voter fraud in her favor washes up I'll just have to take a deep breath and accept she's still a legitimate and lawful member of Congress. Just because.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
I guess I should have expected that libertarians would have the most violent, irrational sulks of all.
The thing, is there's plenty of pretty rational criticisms you can make of Obama and his administration from the libertarian/Objectivist (they're not synonymous IMO) -- because he's not an Objectivist. Just as I totally get that the American progressive-left aren't totally wild about a man I've not-entirely facetiously called America's greatest conservative President. (Before anyone blows a gasket, remember my idea of conservatism is Andrew Sullivan's NOT Rush Limbaugh's.) I'd say Obama is temperamentally a Oakeshott conservative, and in policy is generally mildly left-of-center. But, yeah, the idea that he's some raving Marxist or GWB in blackface both confuse me.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Danielle,
Can I just note that even in the most “insane” states, one of every three people you see is voting for the Democratic Party?
I'd also like to suggest a general usage note. Todd 'Legitimate Rape' Aiken and Richard 'being impregnated by your incestuous rapist is a gift from God' Mourdock are not suffering from a mental illness. They're coldly rational rape apologists who are totally responsible for their own misogyny, callous ideology and general ignorance. (No, Todd, lady parts can't magically detect "legitimate" rape-semen and prevent conception. Actual scientists and health care professionals who study this shit say so.)
Please keep that non-trivial distinction clear.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Bevan Shortridge,
He’s still writing SF I see…
To be fair, his primary "mainstream" publisher nowadays - Tor Books - has some serious mana in the SF/F community and wouldn't let anything that generally shitty out of the slush pile without beating it to death with a shovel.
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For SF geeks out there, I couldn't resist sharing Orson Scott Card losing all his shit in a manner that makes The Trumpernator look cool, calm and collected.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
Charle Krauthammer was already beginning the repudiation of Romney – as a closet liberal – on Fox News tonight. They want to convince themselves that he only lost because he wasn’t extreme enough.
Andrew Sullivan's brutal fisking of David Frum's *cough* odd endorsement of Romney is still worth quoting, because it's an unsettling mirror help up to the GOP as well as Mitt.
my real objections to David's endorsement are the following. The premise of his argument is that Romney is a liar of massive proportions whose campaign David accurately describes as "one long appeasement of the most selfish and stupid elements of the Republican coalition," but who actually, in private, doesn't believe a word of it. So not to worry. The "real" Romney will emerge - compassionate, moderate, practical and data-driven, as in Massachusetts - the day after he is elected.
Some questions. First off, he worked in Massachusetts with an 85 percent Democratic legislature. That's a guide to how he'd run the entire country with a Republican Congress? Not buying it. But secondly, if Frum is right, then Romney does not have the character to be president of the US. Someone who lies his way to the top will have no credibility with the American people and no mandate from his party. I do not believe we should elect a fathomless cynic to the White House. David's argument for Romney is even worse than David Brooks': Brooks predicts that circumstances will force Romney into pragmatism. Frum simply says that nary a jot of what Romney said in the primaries is what he actually believes.
And the people Frum correctly described as " the most selfish and stupid elements of the Republican coalition"? Let's tell the dirty truth - they were perfectly, cynically happy to back a man they could barely hide their contempt for a few short months ago because, I believe, they thought he'd be easily biddable in the Oval Office. And why wouldn't they?
If the Republicans had increased their majority in the House and regained control of the Senate, it's spectacularly naive to think a substantively moderate Romney Administration wouldn't have been battered into submission on every front.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Matthew Littlewood,
It’s an interesting piece, touching upon some of the concerns you raise above, while their US correspondent covers it in more detail here.
If you read The Economist regularly enough to take its fundamentally classical liberal editorial pulse, it’s hardly surprising that it has a lot of issues with the Obama Administration’s economic and trade policies. And even on “social issues” it’s often more to the left than Obama is. Don’t forget The Economist came out for marriage equality looong before it was trendy. :)
And, frankly, I find this a bizarre – and disturblingly persistent – meme:
Mr Obama spends regrettably little time buttering up people who disagree with him; of the 104 rounds of golf the president has played in office, only one was with a Republican congressman.
OK, this begs a question. How much time should you spend “buttering up” people who’ve made it perfectly clear from the start their default setting was “fuck off”?
Or to put it a tad more politely:
That’s the approach the congressional Republicans decided to take, and I guess you could argue it worked for them in the 2010 mid-terms, and at least didn’t cost them the House today. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand they OWN IT.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Joe Wylie,
As distinct from the President version, who could never have had a Watergate because nothing so important ever landed on his desk?
No, I mean the man who was president of a union. One of whose first acts as Governor was to sign into law bills that liberalized access to abortion, introduced no-fault divorce and raised taxes. I’m not pretending Reagan was a closet liberal, but you really think the Tea Baggers or the theo-cons would have let him out of New Hampshire alive with a record like that?
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